To be honest, it’s still not going as well as I’ve liked. Because of that I’ve decided to make some changes in my approach, hoping that they will turn the tide.
I received an offer through Sedo.com for one of my domains and I counter offered, but I haven’t heard back from them in quite a while. That’s disappointing because it would have been nice to have a little bit of income to counter-balance all the expenses.
While it’s impossible to hold Sedo.com completely responsible for my dismal earnings, I have switched to Moniker.com’s TrafficClub.com and so far it’s going OK. In about six days I’ve had around 200 page views (remember that I’ve purchased more domain names, so this isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison with Sedo.com) and $0.49 in earnings on five click-throughs. What you can compare with Sedo.com is the average revenue per click which was $0.06 vs. TrafficClub.com’s $0.098. One more thing to keep in mind is that Sedo.com’s average is skewed high by a single, uncharacteristic $0.25 click (most paid between $0.03 and $0.05) while TrafficClub.com’s more accurately reflects my average revenue per click.
Different parking services work better for different domain names, and you’ll see why based on these descriptions. TrafficClub.com’s approach is very different from Sedo.com’s. With Sedo.com, you have a lot of ability to customize the landing page including your choice of layouts, pictures, etc. You even get to select the keyword(s) which can be a really helpful feature. TrafficClub.com on the other hand, takes care of all those things for you which can be either good or bad. Another difference with TrafficClub.com is that they rotate the landing between four different ad networks and over time they’ll give more “air time” to the service that get the most click and/or is paying out the best.
I’ve continued to purchase domains based on research from DomainersEdge.com, and I’ve continued to use a mix of purchasing methods. Some I’ve back-ordered and had to go through the auctions at Pool.com and SnapNames.com.
Others I’ve purchased through the TDNAM.com auctions. Some of the auctions have had a strange end: I was the high bidder at a given price when the auction finished, but right as it closed, it said that I lost the auction. What’s weird is that it still showed my bid amount as the selling price, but I was no longer the winner. That’s strange! My primary complaint with TDNAM.com though, is that it takes them two weeks before they transfer the domain to your account. This has been really frustrating because I like instant gratification!
I also read another domainer’s post which indicated that he liked 1and1.com as a registrar. The $5.99 domain names are nice, especially since it includes masking your WhoIs information. It may simply be that I didn’t poke around enough, but I didn’t see any bulk management tools so I ended up having to change all the DNS information one domain at a time. That was really time consuming, even though I’d only purchased 15 or so domain names.
As always, I’m open to suggestions, so please send them my way!
Hey there. As far as parking your domains go, I would have to recommend Fabulous.com as the best service out there right now. Check them out. They pay pretty well too, generating more clicks and money than any of the other 5 or 6 services I have tried.
I too like 1&1 for domain registration. The only bad thing about them is they don’t do bulk dns transfers so switching nameservers can be a real pain. I just put a movie in the computer and do them one by one :0)